Craziest Thing

Kirsten and I have begun the process of settling into our beautiful three-bedroom house. I am sitting at my desk, beside a window that shows all midnight hues now but hours before filtered the shimmering Lake Athabasca through birchy yellow-green leaves.

If you ever have the opportunity to fly Transwest Air, you should do it. No lines, no question about cargo or baggage or luggage arriving safely, and as the plane is bording, the friendly attendant is likely to recognize you and make sure you get on the plane. Flying over Northern Saskatchewan is difficult to describe—in the early morning haze, perhaps like a felt fabric ocean speckled with pools of mercury. Here—spruce forest and rocky outcrops mottled by lakes stretching beyong the limits of human imagination.

In the short time we have been here, three people have acted as tour guides, each of them pointing out different features of the town. Though the community will be out of gasoline for some time, we had no trouble getting help driving our half-ton of supplies to our house.

Tomorrow, we will pick blueberries from the vast swaths of bushes that stretch for miles behind the school. A gentleman who was born and raised here has offered to take us fishing on Sunday.

If this is the craziest thing that we've done so far, then it's good to know that crazy people seldom know that they are.

Time to go see if we can see some Northern Lights.

Go Time

We are sitting in the living room of my uncle's house in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. We are further north now than most people on the planet will ever venture. And yet tomorrow, in about nine hours in fact, we will fly north further still, almost to 60° but not quite. That's exciting for a few reasons.

In the first place, crazy people who want to teach in remote areas always set the Territories as their goal. We've thought this way, too. But such dreamers are, of course, an entire demographic. We're excited to be among the handful of people who have ever set a Denesuline First Nation of Northern Saskatchewan as the ultimate destination.

Second, we are intrigued by the mystery. We went to ship our freight at the P.A. Airport today, and a worker there who had lived in FdL said to us, "Wow. That's West." What a conception. In P.A., already North, and P.A.'ns know that they're north, to fly three hours even further north is conceptualized as West. I won't interpret the words at this point—your ideas are as good as mine are.

As I write this brief entry, I am sipping my last alcohol for, perhaps, nearly a year. We are flying to a "dry reserve" and intend to follow the rules. I am worried that my poor liver will not get enough exercise, especially since I have worked so hard to train it vigorously, but I suspect it could use a vacation.

"This might be the craziest thing that we've done yet," Kirsten tells me. I'm inclined to agree, though neither of us quite know why.